Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive, Care England
The social care workforce is in crisis, and the latest data from Skills for Care showed that the sector had over 168,000 vacancies. This puts enormous pressure on care providers because it is difficult to maintain staffing levels, and many providers have had to restrict admissions because of staffing problems. Alongside the challenges of recruitment, there are also issues around retention, and the sector is seeing 25% staff churn, which also has a significant impact on our ability to deliver high-quality, consistent care.
In the face of this workforce crisis, we need more coherent and coordinated action from the Government. They did announce some measures a few weeks ago, but these were fairly piecemeal and did not do what is needed, which is a systematic review followed by a workforce strategy for social care. One of our biggest challenges is that we are always competing for staff with the NHS, which is better funded, offers significantly more in terms of pay and conditions, and has the most astronomical training budget. The annoying thing is that this differentiation between how the workforce in health is treated sits alongside endless statements about integration. It seems to have escaped the Government’s notice that it is impossible to have an integrated system when treating the staff in the different sectors in entirely different ways.
There is a need for a strong workforce strategy in social care. It must begin with a clear skills and competency framework backed by portable qualifications so that when people invest in training and development, it is recognised across the entire sector rather than just one employer. Alongside this new approach to qualifications, there must also be an obvious set of career pathways so that people who enter social care know that they have begun a career and have some view about where it might lead. With proper career structures and portable qualifications, we can attract people from different sectors and bring them into the care workforce. This will require a clear approach to skills transference and an ability for people with skills from other sectors to see how they can quickly move into social care. For some time, many organisations in the sector have been working on the Care First initiative, which mirrors initiatives that have been successfully developed in education to move people mid-career into social care. Sadly, the Government has not thrown their support behind this initiative and yet again, social care has been treated as a poor relation and not seen as worthy of the government support to enable people to move from other sectors and contribute to social care.
One initiative Neil Eastwood has developed is Care Friends, an app that enables people to recommend careers in social care to their friends. This app has been shown to give high success levels, and people recruited through this route often stay in the sector. I was delighted that this had recently received a King’s Award, and it really shows that despite government inertia, we have incredible leaders in our sector, such as Neil, who step up and fill the vacuum left by a lack of interest at government level and develop things that really make a difference.
Social care recruitment and retention is in crisis, and it is starting to have an impact on people’s lives, and it is also having a significant impact on the NHS. Until the Government understands the interdependence between these two systems and works to ensure that social care is an attractive destination for people who are developing their careers, we will see services struggling to cope with demand. Already there is a considerable amount of unmet needs. As the demographics clearly show, we will need significantly more people in social care if we respond to our citizens’ needs. The need for a workforce strategy in social care is urgent. If the Government is not going to come forward and provide resources and care properly, then citizens will not be able to access care and support, and they will go into crisis and put unimaginable pressure on the NHS.
@ProfMartinGreen @CareEngland
